This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

How McClatchy's pension fraud story was brought to light

Wednesday McClatchy finally disclosed to employees details of how it's pension fund was defrauded out of tens of millions.

McClatchy's pension fund was defrauded by an investment scam involving Westridge Capital Management. So were numerous institutional investors, including the University of Pittsburgh, Viacom, the Iowa Public Employee's Retirement System, the Kern County Employees’ Retirement Association, and the Sacramento County Employee's Retirement System.

News reports of the other victims were widely circulated, but until this week, McClatchy's connection was essentially unknown.

Here is how this story played out.

Over the weekend I looked at the Yahoo! message board and saw that one anonymous poster claimed McClatchy's pension fund had been defrauded out of $77 million. The allegation was so shocking, I first thought it was just a baseless message board rumor.

Don't know if it's true but an anonymous poster at Yahoo! message boards says it is..I'm sure McClatchy Watch readers can flush out the real story. If you have info to put the ugly rumor to rest -- or shed more light on the situation -- post the info in comments, or email me.

The Yahoo! message board poster -- a former McClatchy employee -- emailed me Monday with more details which seemed to confirm the fraud story. He also scanned a copy of Form 5500 where MNI listed $77 million in fraud losses, and emailed it to me.

So finally, employees got information about their pension fund that they should have known about months ago. Most of the credit for McClatchy finally disclosing what happened goes to the former employee who sent emails, made the phone calls, and finally got the information he deserved....

22 comments:

I'd like to go on the record and state that Elaine Lintecum, MNI Corporate Treasurer did in fact return my phone call yesterday. She mention the SEC filing and also told me that it was on the MNI Corporate website. We talked for a few minutes, she answered all my questions, and handled herself in a very professional manner.

I am glad this issue has been fully explained instead of buried in a one paragraph footnote in an SEC filing. getting scammed is a big deal when it's a lot of money, whether it is $77 MM, $68MM or just $32MM. All of those amounts are MORE than MCClatchy has made in the last 5 years combined, including KRI as a standalone company.

It is PENSION money we're talking about here, money that is rightfully ours that we have earned through years of hard work.I didn't feel it should be handled so lightly, and I am glad it has been cleared up.

Let's stay vigilant on this. Let's follow this story and see how much we really get back years down the road once this is sorted out. My bet is our pension gets next to nothing. I have spoken with a reporter in Pittsburgh that has been following this story for months, and he said he has never seen MCClatchy's name anywhere in any of the court filings regarding compensation and make goiod on the theft. Someone should follow that and see if MNI is trying to get the money back for us.

"McClatchy said it inherited the investment when it purchased the Knight Ridder Inc. chain in 2006. Last December, it decided to pull out of Westridge, but the withdrawal was subject to a six-month waiting period. The arrests came two months later."

Yes but it’s also fair to say that like many McClatchy “stories”, Lokeman, Van Jones, Heath Care, and now ClimateGate, McClatchy only comes to the table kicking and screaming via a strong pull to the corporate child’s ear, and then only out of embarrassment.

If you still work for McClatchy, this site is a MUST READ daily. If you don't have it bookmarked, you're a complete idiot. Stories like this are invaluable to current and former employees. You won't read them anywhere else, unless McClatchy is forced to print one as embarrassing as this one.

"In announcing its lawsuit against Westridge, the SEC said Westridge principals Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh "essentially treated their clients' investments as their [personal piggy bank] to buy luxury homes, a horse farm and other goodies."---This sounds like the salary and bonus plan of MNI corporate as well, IMO. what's the final difference? Both were greedy. Take the Pruitt 'personal piggy bank' theory out for a spin. It may be legal, but the end result is the same. The only real difference is the wording, IMHO.

To McClatchy's credit, the Sac Bee at least had a story this morning on ClimateGate. In case ya'll missed Jon Stewart hammering the mainstream TV networks ignoring ClimateGate, here's a goodie from Foxnews.com:

The network news broadcasts have ignored a growing scandal over evidence of a potential climate cover-up — and now they've even been scooped by the fake news at Comedy Central.

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" produced its "reporting" on Climate-gate Tuesday night, when Stewart quipped, “Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!”

Getting Elaine Lintecum to call you back is like getting Robert Gibbs to return Sean Hannity's call! JayFred, you da man! Props to 'ol Elaine too. Has Gary Pruitt ever called any former employee back other than Howard Weaver?

"To McClatchy's credit, the Sac Bee at least had a story this morning on ClimateGate."

It proves the rule that McCrappy is either woefully behind the news curve, and is only good for distributing Sunday coupons, or are DNC shills who refuse to cover important stories against those DNC interests.

The state-owned media had to get clearance from the Obama White House before they could run any stories about the scam known as global warming. They had no choice but to run the story on our pension fund being robbed.

You know what? No matter if it was $30 some million or $70 some million, those are dollars that would have been invested in some evil for profit corporation anyway.

Dollars that could have helped some big pharmaceutical conglomerate exploit sick and dying women and minorities by keeping them alive longer so they would be more dependent on their stupid life saving drugs.

Or, some member of the industrial/military/bait store complex that would just use those millions to make bombs and bullets and shinny fishing lures.

We should rejoice that these dollars are not in the hands of evil capitalists. Admittedly it would have been better if those dollars had gone to a good cause like support of public TV or the Obama campaign, but anything is better than adding to the obscene profits of corporate America.

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